


Act Normal

by butimaloneandfree



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Kara deserves better, Secret Identity, i guess, so we get to feel pain together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22597672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butimaloneandfree/pseuds/butimaloneandfree
Summary: When Kara Zor-El first crash lands on earth in 2003, she immerses herself in the role of Kara Danvers. She wears a costume of polyester with a top that tries to look like it is two tops even though it is only one. Alex says it's fashionable She says the lines the Danvers taught her, about her third grade teachers and her parents’ car crash and the life she’d had in somewhere called New Jersey and when people pry further she acts like she doesn’t want to talk about it. She acted like she didn’t feel a deep shame in her gut every minute she spent not passing on her language, art, science, history to anyone who would listen, especially Kal-El Clark. She’s the last carrier of her culture, and she denies it at every turn.-----Basically a character study of Kara's struggle with her identity. This one goes out to everyone who's ever raged against the constant pressure to act 'normal'.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28





	Act Normal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melody_fox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melody_fox/gifts).



When Kara Zor-El first crash lands on earth in 2003, she becomes an actor. Unwillingly, unknowingly, she signs on to put on a performance every second of every day for the rest of her life.

She acts like she can’t fly. She acts like she hasn’t lost her entire world in one day. She acts like she’s human.

She immerses herself in the role of Kara Danvers. She wears a costume of polyester with a top that tries to look like it is two tops even though it is only one. Alex says it's fashionable. She says the lines the Danvers taught her, about her third grade teachers and her parents’ car crash and the life she’d had in somewhere called New Jersey and when people pry further she acts like she doesn’t want to talk about it. She acted like she didn’t feel a deep shame in her gut every minute she spent not passing on her language, art, science, history to anyone who would listen, especially ~~Kal-El~~ Clark. She’s the last carrier of her culture, and she denies it at every turn.

Her new purple backpack has a keychain on it that the other kids call a “Superman” keychain and Kara Zor-El dies a little, knowing that the honor of wearing her family crest means nothing here. Roadside stands sell t-shirts to tourists with no concept of the meaning and she does nothing.

Kara doesn’t learn the term “survivor’s guilt” until much later, and by then she insists that’s a human problem. She doesn’t have survivor’s guilt. She just ~~feels~~ is guilty.

Thirteen isn’t old enough to lose your world, and it’s certainly not old enough to bear the weight of millions of ghosts but she stands anyways. She stands wrong, she’s sure of it and Alex is always happy to point it out. She says the wrong things and does the wrong things even as she acts like she isn’t scared and like the voices aren’t too loud and the skeletons too leering and like her eyes don’t hurt as she tries to keep the heat locked inside.

“We didn’t have birds on my planet” Kara exclaims in a rare moment of elation.

“Don’t say stuff like that” Alex says, “someone might hear you.”

_SomeonemighthearyouSomeonemighthearyouSomeonemighthearyou_

Sleepless night after sleepless night, she lays in bed and whispers to herself when she’s sure no one might hear her. _My name is Kara Zor-El. I’m from Krypton. My mother’s name is was Alura In-Ze. My father’s name –_

She recites everything she can remember. Prayers, songs, historical facts. Takes up painting with a frantic passion in an effort to capture the details that are quickly slipping her mind. Hides them under the mattress so she won’t get in trouble because Kara Danvers has never left the United States, much less the planet.

_Our soul unites us under Rao’s gladsome rays. We’re never lost, never afraid for we shrink not under the Sun of Righteousness. Rao binds us to those we love. He gives us strength when we have none._

She has had so much to cry over in her life that she hates herself for bursting into tears over _this_ of all things, but when Nathan Carlie jeers at her out the bus window for dancing on her walk home from school, the tears come anyways.

It’s not about the dancing, it’s not about the steps to her parent’s favorite dance that she’s already starting to forget, and it’s certainly not about what Nathan Carlie thinks. It’s about the exhaustion. It’s about the last four years of pretending to be normal taking up space in her brain. It’s that every time she slips, she pays for it. Or worse, those around her do.

Being called a weirdo almost doesn’t count as a payment. The Jeremiah-shaped hole in the Danvers household, on the other hand, reminds her of her mistake every single day.

She cries because it’s finally hit her that there’s a lifetime of acting stretching out in front of her, painful and tedious and so, so lonely.

_Our soul unites us under Rao’s gladsome rays. We’re never lost, never afraid for we shrink not under the Sun of Righteousness. Rao binds us to those we love. He… he… he._

One seventeen year old isn’t enough to keep the memories of an entire planet alive.

Kara grows up and comes of age on Earth with none of the customs and rituals she’d been promised from birth on Krypton. Instead of becoming the youngest ever member of the science guild, she goes off to college and shares a dorm room with a girl from Kansas and a bathroom with an entire floor. She doesn’t study science. Kara Danvers can’t study science when Kara Zor-El knows of universes her professors can’t even dream of, elements the textbooks don’t leave room for, and when every time she looks at Alex she’s reminded of how important it is to act normal.

She studies journalism instead.

She’ll become a reporter, as though sharing other people’s truths might lighten the cage she felt in her stomach and free the blockade she felt in her throat every time she opened her mouth to say anything.

After graduation, Kara finds herself, more on accident that any genius scheme, the assistant for Cat Grant and slowly she starts to feel normal. Cat pretty much tells her every single day that she is the opposite of extraordinary, and Kara thrives at her job because that feels like a compliment. Ten years in this role and she’s starting to master it. She still has to think about every single move, plan out clumsiness that is aggressive enough to be believable, but calm enough to never break anything, or, ~~rao~~ god forbid, anyone. She still has to slow herself down, which is harder under Ms. Grant’s watchful eye, but she’s more normal than she’s ever felt before.

Kara becomes Supergirl and for a split second flying feels like freedom, and she wonders if maybe she doesn’t have to pretend _all_ the time. For a split second Kara Zor-El exists again, her family crest proudly splayed across her chest, carrying on the legacy of all she’s lost, until the DEO and Alex drop her from the sky with kryptonite darts to remind her the cost that comes with not acting normal.

And then Supergirl is just another part to play. There are so many things in her life that she has to be mad about, but Kara Danvers is a ray of sunshine and Supergirl is a beacon of hope and Maybe Kara Zor-El would be mad but she’s long gone and beacons and rays don’t get mad so she is definitely not mad that she’s still acting a part every day.

She’s certainly not mad that humans can’t just accept people who are different from themselves. But would it be too much for them to dance a little more? Be a little stranger? Judge a little less? Make it just a little easier for her to count as ‘normal’?

Act normal.

Who decided what’s ‘normal’ anyways?

_Actnormalactnormalactnormalactnormalactnormalactnormal_

The past twelve years of training are put to the test as she slips back and forth from one part to the other.

Kara Danvers wears glasses. Supergirl wears a cape. Supergirl keeps her chin up. Kara Danvers politely defers. Kara Danvers is charmingly clumsy. Supergirl is gracefully powerful. Kara Danvers holds her hands politely in front of her. Supergirl stands with her hands on her hips.

She tries to keep busy enough that she doesn’t have time to wonder what Kara Zor-El would do.

There’s a fine line between acting and lying, and she drops her cousin’s motto: “truth, justice and the American way” in favor of “hope, help, and compassion for all.” It fits better. She doesn’t stand for truth, she hasn’t since she was thirteen, and she knows that justice isn’t something that can just be fought for; there was no justice in her planet’s death, no justice in . She’ll never be an American in her heart. In her heart she’ll always be Kryptonian.

So “hope, help, and compassion for all” it is.

It turns out that when you act long enough, you become an actor. You don’t need to be told the lines anymore when they’re burned into your soul. They come out of your mouth without a second thought.

“Hey Kara, are you okay?” Winn’s voice cuts through the noise and she turns with the smile she’s perfected in the last seventeen years, blinking twice like humans do when startled.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to Melody_Fox for saying "Let's challenge each other to write something by saturday" cuz now my homework's not done but this fic is and it was cathartic. 
> 
> Anyways hmu on tumblr if you want to commiserate about the struggles of living in a world that doesn't understand you (going back to my angsty teenage days tonight). I'm the same url over there.


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